Ars takes a look at KDE 4.0.2. "When KDE 4.0 was officially released in January, there were a lot of gaping holes in basic functionality. During the past few months, the codebase has matured considerably, and the environment is steadily approaching the point where it will be sufficiently robust for widespread day-to-day use. Although there are still many features missing, version 4.0.2 - which was released last week - offers an improved user experience. We tested KDE 4.0.2 with the recently released Kubuntu 8.04 alpha 6." In addition, there is a new 'visual changelog' for KDE 4.1.

How about this. I find the toolbox distracting and the animation uneeded. If you want to add widgets it is just as easy to right click on the desktop. Users of computers with one mouse buttons darn well know how to alt-click so that arugment is weak as well. Further if you do not intend to use widgets and/or have locked your desktop the only thing the toolbox currently serves is the questionable zoom.

Now perhaps in the future the toolbox will actually serve a purpose. Right now though, and for the immediate future, it does not. Aaron has continually and repeatedly stated he is refusing to even consider the removal of the toolbox though he has begun to entertain notions on how to make it less intrusive for people. In all honesty I am not sure this is actually listening to the complaints. The fact is that he is trying to reach comprimise, which is good. At the same time he is still completely and utterly failing to provide any clear vision or timeline for when the toolbox will actually serve a purpose strong enough to merit its mandatory status.

There has been a patch submitted (and rejected) giving an option to hide the toolbox with Aaron's excuse being that it will make the application harder to maintain in the long run (see the legacy kicker as an example.) Not to get personal on this but that is a load of crap. If a 2200 line piece of code is so fragile that there is fear on supportability due to an option to hide a visual element it is doomed. This is neither a large nor particularly complicated module. The only reason to not allow a way to hide the cashew is to force users to see and try features that are added to it in the future. I can not and will not agree with this reasoning. Instead KDE should give us the option to hide the toolbox and a reason not to.

Given time though I am certain there will be others who will create a containment that does not have the toolbox (or at least an option to hide it). The simple fact that Aaron refuses to accept is that no matter how useful it is, or how non-intrusive, there will be users who will not want the cashew on their desktop. I happen to be one of them. I am willing to reconsider if he ever actually gives the cashew a useful purpose but right now it is a blight on the desktop. It is like a sore tooth, if you leave it alone it does not hurt but its mere presence acts as an irritant that continually reminds you of its existence. In all honesty chances are I will never willingly have the cashew on my desktop at this stage. Aaron, with the help of my obstinate side, has assured me of that.

And to touch on a parallel subject, I remember Gnome 2.0 and how bad it was. Yes I would even classify it as worse in some ways than KDE 4.0. I hold the Linux desktop to a higher standard than I did when Gnome 2.0 was released. Even if I did not I thought the idea was to learn from the mistakes of others, not to repeat them.